Pacific Life reviews

3.4

61% would recommend to a friend

(684 total reviews)
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Darryl Button

65% approve of CEO

61% positive business outlook

Pacific Life has an employee rating of 3.4 out of 5 stars, based on 684 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Pacific Life employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Insurance industry (3.6 stars).

Reviews by job title

684 reviews
2.0
Aug 24, 2013

Lots of nice people, few stars

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The benefits are very good. Comprehensive medical and dental options are provided, as well as a retirement account with a generous company match. The cafeteria has delicious cookies.

Cons

Pacific Life does very little to gain or keep high performing employees. Good performance is rewarded with more work and longer hours, while poor performance has no consequences. Office politics are rampant and utterly crippling to efficiency and progress. Training is nonexistent, and new employees often do not have a workstation until their second week or later due to poor planning. Bad/nonexistent management is rampant, as people who are skilled individual contributors get promoted into management with no training and no screening as to their management skills. Managers who are demonstrably terrible are left in their roles for years, while all of their employees leave for other teams or other companies. New hires are barely interviewed (we once hired someone for a highly Excel-based job who had never used Excel, because no one bothered to ask about his Excel experience!) No one really seems to know how to interview at all, in fact - they just go through the motions and hire whomever tickles their fancy. Interviews are full-day gauntlets of 30-minute sessions with a random battery of unrelated managers. Often, none of the "worker bees" get to talk to the candidates at all before one is picked. HR's attitude toward candidates is "you should be so lucky." If you're unhappy at Pacific Life, then good riddance to you. The most skilled employees leave for other opportunities, while HR turns a blind eye. It is almost impossible to fire anyone, meaning that dead weight accumulates. The culture values face time far above work product. A person who puts in overtime to complete a task is valued more highly than a person who completes the same task more efficiently without needing to put in overtime.

1.0
Mar 19, 2013
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

PTO and ability to purchase additional PTO

Cons

Micro-managed, Senior Management has no clue, raises are a joke and supervisors who do not know what you do have input in deciding what your raise will be-over your own supervisor. No possibility for promotion, they just add duties to senior employees without a raise or promotion opprotunity.

1.0
Feb 16, 2013

Beware!

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Nice location, if you can handle traffic. Very expensive to live nearby.

Cons

Extremely poor leadership. Not structured like any other insurance company - titles here are NOT the same as titles at other companies, and the way they operate is unlike anything I have ever seen.

Viewing 94 - 96 of 684 Reviews

Glassdoor has 784 Pacific Life reviews submitted anonymously by Pacific Life employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Pacific Life is right for you.